The musings of a freeborn Englishman who is totally disenchanted with the dictatorial attitude that poses as democracy.

Wednesday, 26 October 2011

So all those Tory rebels were 'eurosceptics' were they?

"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you." Friedrich Nietzsche

With all the political commentators, Conservative Home and Jacob Reese Mogg maintaining that the Conservative Party are by nature eurosceptics and that 81 of their number voted accordingly, a small paragraph at the end of an article by James Kirkup in today's Daily Telegraph caught my eye (unfortunately it does not appear to be on line). In this article he quotes Conservative MPs who say they are worried about reselection come the new boundary changes and at the end of the article comes this:

"One rebel confessed: "I'm actually not particularly anti-European. If there was a referendum tomorrow, I'd vote to stay in. Supporting the motion was partly about keeping faith with the people who sent me here and partly about taking a swing at No10."

This unnamed rebel will not be the only one from the 81 holding similar beliefs and reasons for rebelling, hence the electorate has every reason to be doubtful when a Conservative MP declares himself a eurosceptic. The fact that this rebel is prepared to disregard his/her constituent's faith speaks volumes about polititians principle's and their sense of honour.

And people are petitioning for a second debate on the referendum question? Bearing in mind the above - for what and why, exactly?

10 comments:

I was going through Monday night's votes earlier and I noticed that, all too often, the 'rebels' hjad been people who had previously registered negatively with TTC for having voted the wrong way on issues of sovereignty and regarding bailouts.

It was something that I found myself thinking: "If they hadn't have voted to surrender sovereignty in the first place, they wouldn't need to 'rebel' now."

It's certainly a valid point, and I tend to agree. Indeed some may have voted yes to a referendum on the basis they expect it to result in staying in.But even if they voted for the motion just because they were scared of their local party or electorate then that's a step in the right direction.

In the Derby area, four MPs voted for the referendum motion - two Conservative - Nigel Mills and my own MP Heather Wheeler.Heather has also joined the Better Off Out group. The two Labour MPs were the redoubtable Dennis Skinner who has always been pro independence and Natascha Engel whose speech I heard. She was rather impressive.

On the BBC reports, there has been hardly a mention of the Labour rebels. It is normal for the BBC to ignore Northern Ireland Unionists but they rarely ignore Labour. The Labour rebels are apparently unpersons. It is nothing but "Tory splits" and "Embarrassment for Cameron".

Of course, there will be mixed motives amongst the rebel MPs. There always are in any human enterprise. The vote has brought the issue into the open and, if we kick up enough fuss, it won't go away.

Excellent post David and one that has comes timely as other seemingly unrelated thoughts go through my head.

I recall reading Hitchens call for a rebellion against today's Conservatives before the election and wondered what the hell he was going on about. Retrospectively it all becomes too clear.

The current Conservatives are not what people expect them to be and I'd agree the time is right for some form of breakaway. However, given where we are with the state of Europe, it is time for other things as well such as those you pointed out in your constitution posts.

We need a whole new set of thoughts across the board, especially how we survive and thrive post any EU collapse. In or out of Europe, we need to change. Their uber leftist ideals are failing time and time again and we see those ideals failing here and making us ill equipped to have a nation which could thrive post EU. Currently, the British thinking around these problems is rusty and as The Slog points out some radical realism is called for.

Such a notion of British drive and excellence in which people stand on their own two feet with minimal inteference form the state should have been the rallying cry of conservatism and probably is in many aspects of small c conservatism, but what we have from these now is a marriage of flawed statism and corporate cronyism.

Any new conservative spin up should really comprise of new thinkers. Ones who can make simplify the message that your freedom lies not in more from the state but less. It should make sure that it tells the working class, that there so called benefactors on the left have done nothing but conned them.

Take for example, public sector pensions. The unions could have explained to their members the flaw in the model in that they were never sustainable and led them to take charge of their own retirement. But they didn't. They kept the myth alive because they know that if the working man and woman ever "gets" it, there's no need for the unions and the revenue stream dries up. You can see this across all manner of things.

The time for new thinking has come, from people who are willing to shoot a big hole in big state logic and well below its waterline.

MF: As explained by BJ, it wont happen, they all have 'careers' to think about and BJ's comments are correct re the tribalism of voters. I note today that Farage says there may be some defections - believe that when it happens

W42: If.........

BJ: Agree with defections (see above) - oh and no need to apologise.....